A TIME TO SPEAK
Vol. IV:2 (No. 38)
February 2004 - Shevet-Adar 5764
CHIPPING AT THE
PILLARS
For Israel to withstand the war waged against
it by much of the outside world, the pillars of its own nationhood and peoplehood
must stand strong and unshakeable. But some of these pillars are under attack
from within Israel. Some of the damage is done by ignorance, shallowness,
or indifference that chips at them bit by bit. Some of the damage is done
with calculated malice, by those set on cracking them and bringing them down.
Israel stands on many pillars. Among those
now selected as targets are:
1] THE PILLAR OF KNOWLEDGE
of a unique identity, history, experience and
culture
2] THE PILLAR OF MESORA [TRADITION AND MORALITY]
that must stand close to the Pillar of Knowledge
3] THE PILLAR OF TRUST
between the people of a democracy and the leaders
it elects
* * * * * * *
"Belial" is a biblical term with the connotation of
worthlessness. Son or Daughter of Belial is a metaphor for someone base in
thought and deed. Today the Children of Belial appear in the various shapes
of a strutting albeit self-proclaimed "elite", and smug vulgarians, and faithless
politicians. While a nation and a people are under murderous assault from
without, its own Children of Belial are chipping and hacking away at the
pillars on which it stands.
THE PILLAR OF KNOWLEDGE
A people that does not remember its own past
cannot understand its present and jeopardizes its future. The people of Israel
have a long past to remember, and both the early days and the present are
being distorted or even falsified, most prominently by persons with pretensions
to intellect, scholarship, and artistry.
Yesterday:
The concern here is not the foreign biblical
scholars who demolish their own specialty by concluding that the Hebrew Bible
is a late fraud and Ancient Israel never existed.
Rather, it is a trend found in the recent stratum
of Israeli archaeology not to study the past but to deny it. The technique
for this is to dismiss all persons and events for which they have not yet
found a supportive shard or artifact.
Thus the eminent Israel Finkelstein declares
that David and Solomon never existed, or if they did were merely petty tribal
chieftains. The proof of which is: Their royal archives have not [yet] been
found. This argument fails on the simple observation that ancient archives
are usually found on sites that had been abandoned, with no rebuilding or
habitation to disturb or cover the relics -- a condition that cannot be expected
in Jerusalem.
This is the kind of superficial but trendy
stuff without serious scholarly foundation, that does not contribute to knowledge
but does deprive a people of their history. It inspires the rabbi of a posh
Temple in California observe Passover by misinforming his congregation of
the "fact" that the Children of Israel were never in Egypt and the Exodus
never took place.
Today:
The approach to ancient history may be shallow,
while the approach to current history can be downright malicious.
The school known as Israel's New Post-Zionist
Historians is summed up by its exemplar Professor Dr. Illan Pappe:
"Indeed, the struggle is about
ideology not facts. Who knows what the facts are? We try to convince as many
people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one,
and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers."
For an historian to admit his contempt for facts and truth may indeed make him something new in his field. Professor Dr. Pappe's ideology is that the very existence of Israel is inherently evil and should not have come to pass. His embrace if this doctrine, unencumbered by concern for fact or truth, has brought him considerable popularity among those abroad who use him to validate their own Israelphobia.
Another prominent New Post-Zionist Historian
is Benny Morris, who have himself the assignment of "shattering myths" about
the War of Independence by diligently compiling a roster of every incident
or alleged incident in which he could accuse an Israeli of a misdeed. Professor
Dr. Morris now notices that his work has been used worldwide as grist for
the mills of Israelphobes, He attributes this damage to readers who do not
grasp that none of it would happened were it not that six Arab states had
not at the time been attacking Israel with the intent to destroy.
* * * * * * *
THE
PILLAR OF MESORA
In Hebrew, the words for "tradition" and "morality" are
very similar, variant forms of mesora, from a root meaning to transmit, or pass on.
Together, they form the ethos of Judaism, Jewish belief, practice and culture.
These are the standards, principles and ideals developed over 4,000 years,
that sustained the Jews through various reversals of fortune and the long,
dark night of exile and oppression. Even though often observed imperfectly
or not all, they have proved their worth.
With the return of Judaism to its native soil,
the Jews once more at last independent in their own homeland, live by them
in whole or in part or not at all, as they choose. Each individual is entirely
free in this democratic society to follow a personal dictate to keep or at
least respect mesora or to reject and discard it, or even to despise
it.
But for some this freedom of choice is not
sufficient. It is intolerable to them that mesora should exist, and that those who follow it
should have the same freedom of choice that they exercise for themselves.
These are the ones who chip away at the pillar of mesora, pouring out contempt and ridicule on those
whose retain their attachment to ancestral values.
Since the only thing they themselves hold sacred
is the arbitrary "green line", they brand as most demonic of all those pioneers
who undertake the toil and the risks of rebuilding the Land of Israel --
even while they themselves enjoy the amenities and amusements of a Tel Aviv
build by a previous generation of such pioneers.
This habit may be of little import from a maker
of ugly sculptures or a producer of dreary films. It is of more import when
it is the agenda of the self-anointed "left-wing intellectual elite" that
control the tax-supported Broadcasting Authority and have become dominant
in journalism and higher education.
It is of lethal import when it is the platform
of political parties that take part in one or anther government coalition,
and the dogma of holders of high office. Thus, the people who make and carry
policy and enact laws have included:
-- a government minister who sneers at sentimental
regard for "the tomb of Rahab the Harlot and other holy places".
-- a Minister of Education who strives to "replace
archaic Jewish values with modern universal ones" -- as though "values" come
stamped with an expiration date.
-- a government minister who thinks it cute
to instruct all Israelis to eat pork on Shabbat.
-- a government minister who sees no reason
why the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron should have any more significance
to Jews than "Jewish graves in Prague".
-- a court judge sits on his bench and refers
to Orthodox Jews as "lice".
For those who yearn for a society liberated
from mesora, the redemption of the Land of Israel and
of Jerusalem are an intolerable vindication of mesora and therefore must be undone. Their agenda
of surrender and withdrawal and appeasement touted as "pragmatic" or even
"moral" can never achieve security or peace. But it can if carried through
it can achieve what many of its proponents want even more: to break the Jewish
heart and crush the Jewish spirit.
* * * * * * *
The Children of Belial in modern Israel like
to come together in associations with names that give an illusion of benevolent
or even noble causes:
Shalom Akshav [Peace Now], and its bastard sibling Gush Shalom [Peace Bloc], led by the unsavory Uri Avneri. Both literally
embrace not only the cause but also the persons of PLO terrorist. Both are
funded by the European Union.
Yesh Gavul {There Is A Limit], whose program is to induce Israeli soldiers
to desert or at least refuse to carry out their duties, and to persuade high
school graduating classes to evade military or national service. It is supported
by two tax-exempt American charities, The New Israel Fund and the Shefia
Fund.
Rabbis for Human Rights, whose director advocates the dissolution
of Israel, appoints itself monitor of the virtue of the Jews defending Israel.
Its dedication to moral principle on a par with the New Historian's dedication
to facts and truth.
According to its own code, when Israelis are
murdered, grievously injured, or bereaved by PLO terrorists, that does not
count as an offense against human rights. When Arabs living under PLO rule
are lynched or otherwise maltreated, that does not count as an offense against
human rights. Defense of human rights consists of a search for occasions
to accuse Israel of violating the human rights of Arabs.
Search is supplemented with invention. Several
years ago, the Rabbis spread a report internationally that Israel had meanly
chopped down as many as 100,000 Arab olive trees. This brought noble American
Jews rushing to plant olive trees for and hold sympathetic meetings with
the suffering Arab families.
A ploy that works this well is worth using
over again -- though on the recent second round the Rabbis claimed only about
600 olive-tree victims of Jewish depredations. The story at first won so much credence that
even the President of Israel denounced the act, and two Jewish youths were
actually arrested for perpetrating it.
The nasty impression made by these charges
is not vitiated by the simple fact that both times the Rabbis when challenged
could produce no evidence at all to support their accusations. Perhaps they
ended their rabbinic studies before they got to the Ninth Commandment.
The Rabbis for Human Rights attended the UN's
infamous Durban Conference in August of 2001 that turned into a frenzy of
assault on Israel. The Rabbis chose to stay at the Conference and join in
the frenzy, after the delegations of Israel and the United States and the
other Jewish organizations walked out in disgust.
* * * * * * *
THE PILLAR OF TRUST
A state cannot function well or for long without
a political contract between the populace and the government. This is essential
in a democracy, where competing candidates and parties present their programs
and promises, and the voters chose among them.
It is not uncommon for officeholders once elected
to neglect or even negate their programs and promises, leading to a common
wariness of "election promises". Derelictions may be on matters small or
great, but rarely in the history of a democracy has there been violations
of the political contracts so egregious and so lethal as those inflicted
on the people of Israel in the last dozen years.
1] The election of 1992 brought to power a
cabinet headed by Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister and Shimon Peres as Foreign
Minister. This came after and in good part because Rabin vowed never to deal
with the PLO, jeopardize Jerusalem, or allow the Golan Heights to revert
to a base for Syrian military aggression.
Yet, Peres and his minions had already been
holding secret illegal dealings with the PLO, and moved on to concoct the
poisonous Oslo Accords without the knowledge of the public and for a time
even without the knowledge of Prime Minister Rabin. This was in tune with
the doctrine later openly declared by Peres' henchman Yossi Beilin: If you
want to do something that you know the public will reject, then you must
do it in secret, so it will be a fait accompli that the public must swallow whether it likes
it or not.
The elected government reversed the very positions
that had won it votes, and proceeded to force through Oslo Accords for which
it never achieved majority support from the public or its representatives
in the Knesset. And so began the entirely foreseeable and preventable Oslo
War.
2] The government of Shimon
Peres was ousted by the voters, and succeeded by the inept government of
Binyamin Netanyahu. That was in turn succeeded by the government of Ehud
Barak, described by American pundit George Will as "the most calamitous"
of any democratically elected prime minister.
3] When Barak could not even succeed at surrendering
the country to the enemy, failed, and much of his own cabinet had walked
out on him, he called a special election for Prime Minister. The voters,
shuddering at how close they had been pushed to the abyss, turned to the
Leader of the Opposition, Ariel Sharon.
Since the inception of Oslo he had been fuming
against the doings of Peres, Beilin, Barak and Co. Articles published under
his name denounced abandonment of the Land of Israel, attacks on the pioneers
of Yesha [the biblical Judea and Samaria] appeasement of the PLO,, and urged
the nation to stand fast against them. (Too little noticed in those days
was a mutter that "a Palestinian state is inevitable" -- which it was not
then and still is not.)
After his landslide victory at the polls, Sharon
formed a coalition government with the defeated rival party, whose doings
he had been denouncing up to and through the election. As his Foreign Minister,
he chose Shimon Peres -- the arch-perpetrator of Oslo, proponent of the policy
of retreat and appeasement, patron of Arafat and the PLO. This reversal of
the stance that had won him the post of Prime Minister was passed off as
achieving "unity".
4] This is the government that was faced with
the "Quartet's "Roadmap", an itinerary imposed by outside powers, that if
followed can lead only to Israel's doom. [See Issue 23]. Rather than resist
this push toward the abyss, Sharon pushed his own cabinet to approve it.
The approval was achieved by a single vote, with some abstentions by ministers
who agreed not to vote Nay in exchange for a guarantee that 14 Points would
be added to the route.
The 14 Points were never publicly defined,
and have not been heard of since. The points were in any case pointless,
since Washington's Condaleeza Rice had already issued her fiat the Roadmap
is "non-negotiable" and Israel has no choice but to accede to it. Sharon
has now become an ardent advocate for this Roadmap, repeatedly issuing assurance
that nothing he does will mar it.
5] By the next regular election for the Knesset,
one Amnon Mitzna was taking his turn as head of the Oslo Party. He put forth
as his platform a plan to surrender unilaterally; give away Judea and Samaria
and Gaza and the Golan Heights unconditionally. That is: just give them to
the PLO to turn into bases for its terror war against Israelis. Sharon denounced
this notion vigorously, the Israeli public voted massively against Mitzna's
lunatic program, and his supporters suffered an electoral disaster. Now,
in the most recent of his series of switches of conviction,. Sharon had in
effect adopted the Mitzna Notion as the basis of his own program du jour, complete with his own war on the Jewish communities
he had latterly supported and praised.
The full diagram for that program has not yet
been revealed to his cabinet, to the Knesset, to his own party, or to the
people of Israel. It is confided only to outside parties, including that
portion of American Jewry that can be expected to press the U.S. government
to support it -- whatever it turns out to be.
One emissary entrusted with this mission is
Leader of the Opposition Shimon Peres, going about assuring the American
public that "Israel has no moral claim" to Judea and Samaria. He thereby
contradicts the American public itself, that by margins of 70 percent and
more believes in and supports the right of the People of Israel to the historic
Land of Israel.
Another emissary is the Prime Minister's personal
lawyer, as though the deal were to dispose of the cucumber farm that is Sharon's
private property, rather than to dispose of the Land of Israel that is not.
Most of the outside world sees Ariel Sharon
the Bulldozer as a monster, cruel and bloodthirsty. Israel suffers from this
association at the same time that it suffers from his failure to protect
it. In his three years in office, Israelis have been murdered, injured and
bereaved more grievously than at any other time in their history. Sharon
has done nothing to protect them. He orders occasional small actions that
leave the terror-machine intact or easily repaired.
He tries to turn Israel into a ghetto, cowering
behind a fence that terrorists are already learning to circumvent. With one
bloody atrocity after another, he scarcely bothers any more to huff and puff
empty threats. The people of Israel and the soldiers of Israel are virtually
abandoned by the head of their government.
* * * * * * *
The Pillar of Trust is chipped every time that
-- candidates for office present a false face
to the voters
-- politicians win office with one program
and then pursue an opposite one
-- winners pick up the platforms of the losers,
that the voters have rejected.
-- officeholders do in the dark what they dare
not do in the light.
Any democracy is impaired when citizens feel,
often through bitter experience, that candidates for office will lies to
them and holders of office will betray them. In Israel, assaulted on every
side by terror, hatred and slander, the Pillar of Trust must not be cracked.
Some of Israel's friends in the world now perceive
it as weak, even broken in spirit. It is not. Young soldiers and reservists
risk their lives every minute of the day, and too often lose them. Minimum-wage
security guards have sacrificed their lives to protect their charges. Bus-drivers
are the first line of defense for their passengers.
They need and deserve at last to have a government
worthy of them.
END